Artistic possibilities and polarities

 ‘If everything is possible,’ says Nelson artist Christian Lichtenberg, ‘it can be overwhelming.

‘But such diversity – the idea that the whole universe is our canvas – brings great opportunities. It invites us to let go of control. And that’s when things start to speak through you.’

Everything indeed seems possible with Swiss-born Christian, who creates his beautifully considered, highly idiosyncratic work through a variety of media disciplines, including mixed-media, photography, video, audio and installation work.

Christian, with his wife Rebecca Pflaum, moved here from Bali late in 2019 and last year bought land in the Glen, with a hundred-year-old-Californian bungalow which they gutted and rebuilt to create a beautiful and tranquil space in which to live and work (see WildTomato Nov 2020 issue).

Walking with Christian through their gallery-like home as he explains his many artworks adorning the plaster walls, I’m struck by the sharp intelligence behind his observations.

‘I’m a messenger with no message,’ he says. ‘What I create is an empty pot for the viewer to feel whatever is in them, not me. For me, good art always has this dimension. It allows people to bring their own understanding to it.’

With his mixed-media work, Christian often bases it around the special papers he’s collected over many years, discovered in antique stores and flea markets, often covered in fading script, printed or handwritten. They’re predominantly Asian, from Cambodia, Laos and Japan, but there’s also a precious supply of five-hundred-year-old French paper sourced from a castle in Northern France.

We stop before a striking abstract work where against an assembled background of his prized papers there is a large glowing circle of golden brown/orange.

‘I used saffron to get the colour and texture,’ he says nonchalantly, as if it were no different than any tube of acrylic paint you’d buy in an art shop.

At another piece featuring a rich, deep brown/black square looming from the printed paper backdrop, Christian simply says, with a smile, ‘Coffee grounds.’

 ‘I break all the rules. I don’t care for them. I find this refreshing. It’s what speaks through me that makes things interesting.’

As a former architectural photographer Christian is also more than a little comfortable behind a lens. But for all that, it’s his natural inclination to disturb complacency and challenge the ordinary that drives his art.

We pause before a large print of a startlingly beautiful empty landscape of vast vibrant green escarpments, photographed somewhere in Wales. Perched near a cliff’s edge is a tiny human figure, inserted by Christian after the fact: a simple act that lends dramatic scale and emotional grandeur to the setting.

‘With my photography, say like when I capture a landscape, my artist’s heart wants to transport the scene in a way that’s unexpected, that allows an idea to emerge. So I’ll go to the studio and see what I can do with that idea.

‘Photography doesn’t fully tell the truth,’ Christian says, ‘it creates its own reality. Sometimes it’s more real than my vision. Sometimes I want to work on it, manipulate it.’ He laughs, ‘I say just don’t trust me.’

What can be trusted are the outcomes he achieves:  we are intrigued, mystified, enchanted; and amused, like with a delightful smaller work in which Christian has taken a series of simple line-drawn animals found in the pages of a Japanese manuscript, and added within each depiction dots at the endpoints, joined by connecting lines to create his very own fanciful map of new constellations, featuring creatures like elephants, giraffes and ostriches.

‘When I take pages out of ancient paper books,’ he explains, ‘they often become great starting point for ideas.

 ‘I’ll mix acrylics with lacquers and other water-based mediums so they will chemically react in unexpected ways. I’ll use ash, or sand. The process is the interesting thing, not the result. It’s almost like a therapy, where you often feel you have no choice.  You eventually understand that you know nothing.’

Christian recalls an exhibition he once saw as a young man, where all that was featured was a white room with its contents, everything in it, white. ‘It provoked me,’ he says. ‘At first, I was so angry. I’d paid good money just to experience that! But I stayed with it, and eventually I got it. I was being gifted space. I was being handed nothing, and therefore, paradoxically, everything! Now I realise I feel very at home in the paradox. It’s where everything dissolves into “I don’t know.” 

He considers himself something of a Renaissance man. ‘I admire those who can focus on one thing, like, say, a dedicated single approach or mastering one particular skill, but I do think that that can become all-encompassing, even restrictive. I’m engaged instead by the potential and possibilities of polarity.’

To demonstrate this dichotomy that so often fuels his creativity Christian fetches two books from the pantheon of printed works cataloguing his output.

The first is entitled “Echoes from Beyond”, from a photographic exhibition he’d held in Switzerland. He manipulated the images using everything from linseed oil, to overlaying them with scratched window glass. ‘Photography can be so clean, so shiny,’ he says. ‘I’m always wanting to dirty things up.’

The pages feature striking, quietly minimalist scenes, like temple rooftops through the blur of a snowfall, or a single white cup casting a bold shadow across the top of a grainy wooden box. The effect is harmonious, sensitive, poetic.

In contrast to this purity, Christian next flips open his book “Renaissance”, a showcase of images he created between the late-‘90s and 2010. The manipulated photographs suggest a hidden symbolism rich with enigmatic narratives, made further puzzling by the artist’s sometimes ironic titles.

‘I use the titles not to describe what you already see, but to suggest a polarity,’ Christian says. ‘I don’t seek to answer questions, I’d much rather create mysteries.’

The artist plays with an abundance of Renaissance conventions: the use of perspective, an architectural “middle ground”, idealised background landscapes, reflections, the mannerism of postures, dramatic lighting, and the drapery of noble garments.

‘These images reflect the opposite of my “Zen” inspired minimalism. They celebrate my love for orgiastic colours, absurdities and storytelling.’

Christian’s travelled much of his life, from the age of fifteen. ‘I particularly remember one time after being in the Sudan, a country so poor, how when I’d returned home to Switzerland, a country so rich, I witnessed none of the joy and happiness I’d experienced with the Sudanese. I realised it was because no-one in Switzerland had time, everyone was busy rushing around making money.

‘Having time, being in nature, these are the real keys. In my life it’s the only church. I’ve visited many places. I’ve lived twenty years in a farmhouse in France, three years in an artists’ colony I established in a disused hospital in Basel, eight years in Bali. But being in Nelson, here amongst the trees near the sea, feeds me. I’m living the dream.’

It will be fascinating to see the new work Christian manifests from his dream setting. Whatever emerges, it is sure to captivate, provoke, and ultimately, delight.